the normal content is too easy

[HyoMinPark]

Some of the ease is likely them undertuning just a bit to compensate for the stat squish. From what I understand from some WoW players, it took a full expansion for them to get the tuning just right after their stat squish.

I doubt that the stat squish had a significant effect on difficulty outside of a handful of situations (e.g., Dun Scaith hits harder now than it did in ShB for certain bosses; they actually had to heavily adjust UCoB because simply applying the stat squish resulted in the raidwides flat out killing the party even with stacked mitigation). The content was still suffering from decreased difficulty before the squish happened. P1S is almost the same difficulty as O1S—the latter of which is notorious for being cleared in one pull. The only thing that sets P1S apart Alte Roite is Intemperance is a gotcha mechanic.

SB was easier than HW in a lot of aspects, but the fights were still engaging enough for it to be relatively excused, in my opinion. ShB really started the trend of the devs heavily leaning on “accessibility” and using it as an excuse to neuter both content difficulty and job complexity. At least in SB, the easier fights could be excused because jobs still had layers of complexity to them. Now, it’s like a double whammy: easier content and a lot of the jobs are heavily streamlined and without nuance/complexity. I know I have a heavy bias as a healer main—but I was a physical ranged main prior to ShB and I honestly cannot even enjoy the role anymore because of the insistence they should be Baby’s First DPS.

I don't expect much from normal content but any old content should be balanced to be as similar as possible to when they launched to at least retain the normal level of difficulty. People skip and ignore so much mechanics in old fights that the supposed normal difficulty is very easy instead.

The state of Orbonne is truly sad. The first tier 24-mans suffer the most since they never implement item level syncs for them—but usually the third one retains some semblance of original difficulty because of the minimum item level being closer to the max item level for that expansion. But Orbonne is a sad, sad shell of itself thanks to the double whammy of auto Echo and TGC being nerfed into the ground. I never agreed with either decision because I liked how there was a fight that actually punished for trying to cheese or ignore his mechanics.

[AnnRam]

The game has become so easily and tedious that I don't know how new players can digest the early game without 3 cups of coffee per session. Same for end game or post MSQ current patch there is nothing to do at least I'm glad that SE iits opening this game more in to PVP

[Stanazolol]

The game has become so easily and tedious that I don't know how new players can digest the early game without 3 cups of coffee per session. Same for end game or post MSQ current patch there is nothing to do at least I'm glad that SE iits opening this game more in to PVP

Too many paying customers cant handle it any harder. The almighty dollar is king. If you need to blame someone, its the braindeads, lazies, and carpal tunnels that cause this.

[Raoabolic]

Too many paying customers cant handle it any harder. The almighty dollar is king. If you need to blame someone, its the braindeads, lazies, and carpal tunnels that cause this.

I mean, the company and devs could... you know... not cater to them. Who am I kidding, long term thinking only causes headaches, we should just think about the moment!

[Ronduwil]

Too many paying customers cant handle it any harder. The almighty dollar is king. If you need to blame someone, its the braindeads, lazies, and carpal tunnels that cause this.

The truth is that no matter how hard a dungeon is, if you do it every single night, it's going to seem easy. Normal content is not intended to be consumed time and again for hours on end. It's one and done for most casuals. Endgame players mostly do them for the ludicrous rewards that facilitate their endgame content (Savage/Ultimate trials and raids). Those rewards don't exist to reward effort; they exist to entice hardcore players into running casual content with casuals. Unlike Blizzard, the SE team understands the difference between a social game and a meritocracy. I have yet to run a dungeon in this game that I didn't die on my first run through. Maybe you're a gaming prodigy who instinctively understands and responds to every mechanic before you're even aware that it exists, but as far as I'm concerned, the difficulty for dungeons and normal raids seems about right. I die a lot at first, and then I gradually get to a point where everything is second nature, and then I can queue in a healing role and laugh at the new players as I bring them back up. The fact that the content is easy enough to be cleared despite a few deaths in the group is what enables me to laugh through that experience. If you want to see the toxicity that's bred when content is designed to be as difficult as possible for as long as possible, go try out M+ in WoW. They've even built functionality into the game that facilitates gatekeeping so that you can keep out the "braindeads, lazies, and carpal tunnels," ensuring that they have as miserable an experience as possible.

[Semirhage]

I keep hearing that gatekeeping is a bad thing, but my every encounter with it suggests that it would discourage sneering toxic casuals who constantly vent their pride at not giving a crap about the games they play, tell "evil elitists" to get out if they don't like it, and hypocritically whinge about gatekeeping in the next breath after telling someone to get out.

I don't see any downsides here.

[HyoMinPark]

The truth is that no matter how hard a dungeon is, if you do it every single night, it's going to seem easy.

Dungeons are easy the first time you do them. Occasionally you might meet one that has some spice, but they aren’t that common. The ones that come to mind are OG Stone Vigil, Aurum Vale, The Vault in HW (before it was nerfed), Bardam’s Mettle, and Holminster Switch.

I have yet to run a dungeon in this game that I didn't die on my first run through. Maybe you're a gaming prodigy who instinctively understands and responds to every mechanic before you're even aware that it exists, but as far as I'm concerned, the difficulty for dungeons and normal raids seems about right.

I could count on maybe one hand how many dungeons I’ve wiped on or died in the first time I ran them. I’m certainly not a gaming prodigy. If we’re going to compare anecdotes, mine directly contradicts yours. With the exception of a handful, they are simply facerolls. Especially the “expert” dungeons.

Occasionally there will be a normal mode raid that will wipe a party of newcomers, but that’s primarily due to gotcha mechanics. Not inherent difficulty. Same with Alliance raids. Rhalgr wiped alliances of newcomers repeatedly when released. That was mostly because we didn’t know he could summon fists and punch players off the arena. Or people messed up the knock back he does. But none of those mechanics are difficult to understand or execute.

I die a lot at first, and then I gradually get to a point where everything is second nature, and then I can queue in a healing role and laugh at the new players as I bring them back up. The fact that the content is easy enough to be cleared despite a few deaths in the group is what enables me to laugh through that experience.

The content is easy enough that you can have 20 deaths and still clear. All you really need is one competent healer and/or a semi-decent tank. A competent healer alone can keep an entire party alive in an 8-man or 24-man because two healers aren’t even needed in there. You technically don’t even need a full 24 people. The day Tower at Paradigm’s Breach launched, I was in a run where 12 players killed the first boss because the first knock back he does blew the majority off the ledge. And instead of waiting for us to pick them up (there were still healers alive), they just immediately returned. The ones that didn’t picked up the bodies that remained and we kept going.

[Stanazolol]

The truth is that no matter how hard a dungeon is, if you do it every single night, it's going to seem easy. Normal content is not intended to be consumed time and again for hours on end. It's one and done for most casuals. Endgame players mostly do them for the ludicrous rewards that facilitate their endgame content (Savage/Ultimate trials and raids). Those rewards don't exist to reward effort; they exist to entice hardcore players into running casual content with casuals. Unlike Blizzard, the SE team understands the difference between a social game and a meritocracy. I have yet to run a dungeon in this game that I didn't die on my first run through. Maybe you're a gaming prodigy who instinctively understands and responds to every mechanic before you're even aware that it exists, but as far as I'm concerned, the difficulty for dungeons and normal raids seems about right. I die a lot at first, and then I gradually get to a point where everything is second nature, and then I can queue in a healing role and laugh at the new players as I bring them back up. The fact that the content is easy enough to be cleared despite a few deaths in the group is what enables me to laugh through that experience. If you want to see the toxicity that's bred when content is designed to be as difficult as possible for as long as possible, go try out M+ in WoW. They've even built functionality into the game that facilitates gatekeeping so that you can keep out the "braindeads, lazies, and carpal tunnels," ensuring that they have as miserable an experience as possible.

Normal content is intended to be consumed hours on end. Well, I guess depending on your definition of hours on end, but the daily roullettes are intended to be done daily, by casuals or otherwise. If you play for any significant period of time, you will have multiple run throughs of every dungeon and should know most of them very well.

But even that doesnt account for most of thw dungeons being ridiculous easy even the first time. I mean, they are four man dungeons but you dont need four people to clear them. You dont even need four people for most wall pulls. And if you play warrior, you dont even need a healer, and barely need a dps. The dungeons are so easy, one semi decent player can carry a squad full of braindeads, and I think its working as intended.

[Ronduwil]

Normal content is intended to be consumed hours on end. Well, I guess depending on your definition of hours on end, but the daily roullettes are intended to be done daily, by casuals or otherwise. If you play for any significant period of time, you will have multiple run throughs of every dungeon and should know most of them very well.

If they're designed to be done for hours on end, why are they 20-45 minutes apiece and only give significant rewards once a day? If you're spending hours a day wiping on a normal dungeon run, then you're either a horrible player or you're playing a very poorly designed game. It's a daily roulette, not an hourly one. You're basically being rewarded for doing daily community service and helping a new player progress through MSQ/questing. It's not like Bozja or Ultimates where you're expected to invest hours trying to progress through the content. Normal content was clearly designed as a casual experience. The reason you don't approve of normal difficulty is that you would rather design the entire game as a meritocracy. I've done my time in WoW, and I've seen how toxic and unfun games that are designed as meritocracies can become. I'm not saying that meritocracies don't have their time and place, but that time and place is in Ultimates and in try-hard modes like Bozja and solo PotD/HoH. There's no shortage of difficult content in this game.

[Theodric]

I keep hearing that gatekeeping is a bad thing, but my every encounter with it suggests that it would discourage sneering toxic casuals who constantly vent their pride at not giving a crap about the games they play, tell "evil elitists" to get out if they don't like it, and hypocritically whinge about gatekeeping in the next breath after telling someone to get out.

I don't see any downsides here.

If nothing else, more development teams need to draw a line in the sand and clearly outline where they want the base difficulty to be. Then focus their efforts on trying to find ways to get people to overcome that hurdle instead of lowering the bar to the point where many players just find the bulk of content to be mind numbingly easy.

I don't even raid in this game outside of doing normal mode once or twice because the higher difficulties aren't canon. Especially in story driven games, I like enemy power to be reflected well.